Liquid conditioning modules for treating and/or modifying the properties of liquid can be used for liquid treatment in municipal liquid treatment facilities (e.g., water treatment plants) or as part of a home or industrial liquid treatment systems. They are also useful in equipment which uses liquid, such as cleaning equipment. Such liquid conditioning modules may include a solid or liquid treatment component which is added to the liquid for various purposes. For example, the liquid conditioning modules may include various chemical agents (referred to as “treatment components”) which are added to the liquid in small amounts in order to control chemical or physical aspects of the liquid, such as liquid hardness or scale.
Known liquid treatment liquid conditioning module systems may not effectively treat the liquid. These problems are particularly evident in applications in which there are variations in liquid conditioning module usage rates, liquid flow velocity and line pressure. In such situations, it can be particularly difficult to maintain consistent and stable treatment component concentration levels. In addition, existing systems have difficulty operating at flow rates which are low enough to provide long lasting and economical liquid treatment, such as for protection against scale build up or for prevention of any other number of undesired liquid characteristics. Many of the known liquid treatment systems operate with large variations in treatment component concentrations and a reduced life due to the wide variety of operating conditions of the equipment in which they are used, such as extended equipment down times, variable flow rates (often adjusted by an operator) and associated changes in liquid line pressures, and short start and stop intervals. These variations in operating condition can disrupt the consistency of the treatment component concentration in the liquid stream. This impacts system performance by potentially under dosing the liquid with the treatment component, or cost of the treatment component, when liquid is excessively over dosed with the treatment component.